Archive for the ‘Grid’ Category

We were told 28 days. That is how long it was going to take that single engineer to bust down the door into the plaugeworks. Now, that same gentleman still tells us it will be 28 days…but making the assumption it was 28 days from that first week, I want to be ready for the Plagueworks! I’m not sure what GridStatusRaidDebuff has updated up to this point for Ice Crown, but in the sake of always being prepared I thought I’d share which debuffs I’m going to be on the lookout for come tomorrow!

As always, these are all speculative, and I will update them as I have experiences myself with the encounters and I am open to adding in things I missed, but you found! (Again, I’d like to refer you to Kae’s excellent walkthrough on adding debuffs to GRID, if you need assistance with adding debuffs). Also, please keep in mind, these are healer-centric!

Rotface

Mutated Infection – This will be the most important debuff to add for this fight! It will inflict ~4k damage every second for 12 seconds and reduces healing by 50%. Not only will healers need to give the infected person some extra attention, but those that can cleanse disease will need to be able to follow that target and cleanse them once they are in the designated “ooze area”.

Sticky Ooze (?) – I’m not 100% sure about if this can/will be shown as a debuff. But in reading the abilities in the encounter, it’s one that as both a raid leader and healer I want to be aware who has it. The debuff itself will inflict ~3k damage every second and will decrease movement speed by 50%.

Festergut

Vile Gas and Vile Plague – These will be important to note for everyone in the raid, as raid members will need to move away from anyone infected with vile gas/vile plague. Healers will need to know who is infected as it will cause the target ~5k shadow damage every 2 seconds for 6 seconds. If anyone is nearby the person infected it will also cause ~4k damage to those close.

Gastric Bloat – This will be a debuff that stacks on the tanks. It will be important to note, because we cannot have a tank hit 10 debuffs or it will cause “Gastric Explosion”. What is also important to note about this debuff is that it will inflict significant (~15k?) damage to the tank. It is also important to note that as the stacks of gastric bloat increase, damage done by tank increases by 10% per stack. I mention it because once a tank reaches 9 stacks, they will have to make a concerted effort to stop building threat, so they don’t overtake the new tank.

Inoculated – As a raid leader this will be the most important debuff to be aware of, as any players that are not properly inoculated will meet their untimely demise when the blight hits. This debuff stacks 3 times, and anyone with fewer than 3 stacks of inoculated will take fairly hefty damage during blight.

Gas Spore – This will be important for everyone in the raid to know, as they will need to move to this person to become infected with “Blighted Spores” in order to become inoculated. Additionally, it will deal ~2k shadow damage. I would prioritize this over inoculated debuffs.

Blighted Spores – Healers will need to be aware of who has blighted spores as they will take ~2k shadow damage every second for 6 seconds. Everyone in the raid will have this debuff as they become inoculated, so it appears that there will be some heavy raid healing involved. Those that survive will become inoculated. I would prioritize this over the inoculated debuffs.

Putricide – It should be noted that I am less sure about these debuffs than the others. This is largely because this content was mostly untested on the PTR due to various bugs. As such, please make sure to note what you are or are not seeing and make adjustments as needed!

Mutated Abomination(?)/Mutated Transformation(?) – I am not sure which debuff will show, but you will want to know who has drunk the potion and has become an abomination for a number of reasons. At some point, it is likely that the party occupying an abomination will need to be freed via a disease cleanse. But, more importantly, abominations will cause ~4.5 damage to all nearby players.

Gaseous Bloat – This will be placed on players that are targeted by Gas Clouds. The player will start with 10 stacks of this debuffs and will take damage every 2 seconds. It will be very important to keep them alive! It will be equally important for that player to move away from the gas clouds.

Volatile Ooze Adhesive (?) – I’m not positive how this debuff will be listed, but I think this will be it. This will indicate the target that has been selected by the volatile ooze, and will be stuck to the ground. The party with the debuff take ~6k damage PER SECOND. Additionally, if the ooze is not killed by the time it reaches the target, there will be ~170k damage split between all players withing 10 yards.

Gas Variable (?) and Ooze Variable (?) – I saw these listed in one of the few write-ups that I found as possible debuffs. Unfortunately, this is all the information I have on them right now.

Choking Gas (?) – I believe this will be the debuff that is applied if someone gets hit with a Choking Gas Bomb. It will reduce the player’s chance to hit by 75%. More importantly, if someone has the debuff, it is likely they got hit with the bomb and took ~16k damage.

3.3 is today, and you can almost feel the air crackle with the excitement in the community. A new 5 man, a new raid zone, perky the pug…what isn’t there to be excited about! Well for those of you venturing into Ice Crown Citadel with your maces, daggers, swords and staves polished to be the backbone of your raid, let’s discuss which of these new maladies we will be seeing this week and want Grid to communicate to us. (As always, I refer you to Kae’s excellent walkthrough on adding debuffs to GRID, if you need assistance with adding debuffs.)

Please keep in mind that these debuffs are from my encounter research and best guess, and are not set in stone! If you get into the encounters and realize that a debuff is different, please update your debuffs accordingly! I will do my best to keep this post updated as I learn new things from my experiences with the encounters :) Additionally, if you come across anything new, please let me know, so that I can update my lists! These are not exhaustive lists, and I may have missed somethings.

Lord Marrowgar – You will likely want to be aware of the following debuffs on players:

Bone Spike (debuff may be named differently, potentially “Impale”) Impaled – This one is going to be hugely important for healers! A player impaled with a bone spike will be taking 10% of their health in damage every 5 seconds, and quick heals will be crucial to their survival.

Cold Flame (may not place a debuff) – I am going to add this one, just in case it places a DoT on the person that can’t gtfo of the fire. Why? Because it’s 7k damage a second to someone who is standing in it!

Saber Lash – This will probably not be hugely integral as far as knowing who to heal, but as a raid leader, I want to make sure that all three of my tanks are receiving the debuff. *May not show as a debuff.

Unknown Debuff associated with Bone Storm – Possibly called “Bone Storm” or “Whirlwind of Bone”. This will be another debuff that will be important for healers to be aware of as anyone that gets hit by Marrowgar while he is whirlwinding will receive a bleed effect debuff and will need extra heals. ***edit – try as I might last night, I could not find a debuff to put with this. Party member indicated that they were taking some damage, but no one could find a debuff, and no one could determine if the damage was from being nicked by the boss or a DoT.

Lady Deathwhisper – You will probably want to be aware of the following debuffs on players:

Death and Decay – your basic stay out of the bad shit…but those who fail will need extra heals :)

Dominate Mind – Know who is mind controlled, and who needs to be CC’d until their MC wears off.

Frost Fever – A clensable disease that will be placed on players by the adherants.

Curse of Torpor – an unconfirmed curse that is cast by the adherants.

Necrotic Strike – this will reduce healing on your tank and is cast by cult fanatics. It will be important that tanks will this debuff get fast heals to offset the strike and so that heals can resume normally on him/her.

Touch of Insignificance (potentially a “heroic” ability) – This will be a stacking debuff that your tanks may or may not receive that stacks up to 5 times, reducing their threat by 20% for each stack. It will be important to know how many stacks a given tank has to facilitate tank switches and heals. All DPS needs to keep in mind that both of the tanks need to be 1-2 on the threat meters!

Gunship Battle – True Story…when I heard about this fight, and then thought about my guild doing this fight, at blizzcon I /facepalmed in real life!

Wounding Strike – This will be a MS effect that will be placed on the tank who is tanking Sergeant Kor’kron/Skybreak. Healers will need to be aware of when this effect is active on their tanks.

I know of no other debuffs that we need to be aware of at this time, but will update it if/when I learn of more abilities that we will need to know about.

Deathbringer Saurfang

Mark of the Fallen Champion – This will be of the utmost importance for healers to know about. It will cause each person with this debuff to take significant amounts of damage throughout the encounter, and they will require dedicated healing for the duration of the fight. Healers must know who has this debuff!

Boiling Blood – this will be a DoT that can be placed on up to 6 members of the raid at a time, and must be healed through. The DoT will tick every 3 seconds for 24 seconds. It will be imperative that healers are aware who has this debuff.

Blood Rune – this will be a debuff that is placed on the tank. If tank switches are possible (likely, and semi-confirmed), it may be is important to know which tank is effected with this debuff.

Again, this is just what I have pulled together from my research and is likely not an exhaustive list! Please remember to be flexible throughout your raid nights ahead of you, and make changes as needed. If you learn of any new debuffs, please share.

Have fun, and good luck to everyone as you travel forward on your quest to Arthas! :)

This coming weekend, I’m going to be assisting one of our priest healers with setting up GRID as a trial to see if he likes it, as his current raid frames seem to be falling a bit behind, which is impacting his healing. While I am confident in the actual setting grid up part of the project, I want to make sure that I am providing him everything that I can for priest healing.

I set my own priest up awhile back, but as she’s just a baby priest still (70), I haven’t really perfected, or figured out, what all of the pertinent, priest specific, information I may want to see. I know there are the basics: Raid Debuffs, what I can cleanse, etc. But what else is there and what GRID tools are there available for him?

Here is a list of things that I think will be beneficial for him (he is holy/disc dual spec):

Renew – I am comfortable setting this up with Grid Status HoTs for him

Power Word Shield – I have seen set ups using Grid Side and Corner Icons.

Weakend Soul – I have seen set ups using Grid Side and Corner Icons.

Grace – I have seen this set up with charges on it, how was that done?

Inspiration – perhaps just a normal corner indicator for this?

PoM – What is the best way to track this in Grid?

Power Infusion – I think this can be set up with either timers, a corner indicator, or an icon indicator.

Pain Suppresion – I think this can be set up with either timers, a corner indicator, or an icon indicator.

Inner Fire – I was thinking that just a corner indicator would be good for this, like I use on my shaman for earthshield and water shield.

So what am I missing? What are the best ways to set things up as a priest? I’ve seen a module for GridStatusShields, is that any good? Is it worth recommending? Gah! Any help would be wholeheartedly appreciated! I just really want to make this switch a pleasant experience for him! :)

For three weeks we have been challenged by new content in the Crusader’s Coliseum. As we approach week 4, it is time to start thinking about how to prepare for our newest challenge: The Twin Valkyrs. This fight looks to be quite interesting and fun, and I am looking forward to it very much!

Spiritus over at tank spot has again done an analysis of how he thinks the encounter is going to work. There is also a very good video of the 10 man version embeded in his link that is work watching. I have also uncovered this video of the encounter that is worth a viewing.

Getting GRID Ready

There are a few abilities that should be considered bring added to GRID to assist with tracking what is happening with the encounter (please keep in mind that at this point, this is mostly speculation, and that you may need to update or make changes based on your own experiences with the encounter):

Touch of Darkness – Will cause damage to the affected player and those around him (speculated) under the effect of Light Essence.

You may want to track this so that you know who may potentially be taking extra damage from Touch of Darkness. This may end up being information overload, however, and you may not want to see all this information.

Touch of Light – Will cause damage to the affected player and those around him (speculated) under the effect of Dark Essence.

Like the Light Essence, you may want to track this so that you know who may potentially be taking extra damage from Touch of Light. This may end up being information overload, however, and you may not want to see all this information.

Twin Spike– I am not entirely certain if this will be a debuff on the tank, or a buff on the mob. I will be adding it to my GRID on the first night just to be safe, as if it is a debuff on the tank, it will be important to know. However, I do suspect that this will be a buff to the mob.

Empowered Darkness and Empowered Light – You may want to consider adding these to Grid to know who has what debuffs, although it looks like players are visually marked on their characters to reflect this. I suspect that it will be more information than you need to see in your UI, and I will probably not be adding it to my GRID…however if I do, I will add it as a corner box.

A Few Notes of Import for Healers

There looks to be a few things that healers are going to want to be aware of throughout the course of the encounter, as extra healing will be required:

Power of the Twins – This buff will increase the damage dealt by 30% and allow the twins to dual wield for 15 seconds.

What this means as a healer is that your tank will not only be getting hit harder, but with more frequency. You will want to make sure that you are aware of this buff so that you can boost the healing that you are doing to your tank. You may also want to rotate tank/healer cooldowns for this.

Dark Vortex and Light Vortex – Will cause ~6000 damage every second for 5 seconds

The raid should be “attuning” themselves to avoid this damage, however healers should be ready to heal if a tick or so of this gets to anyone in the raid.

Surge of Darkness and Surge of Light – Will cause 1500 damage every 2 seconds to dark/light enemies.

While most of this should be mitigated via interrupts (I think!), be ready for someone to be slow and need some extra healing.

Another ability that healers will want to be aware of, and perhaps use cooldowns to help make healing a bit easier.

I hope that this is helpful for everyone that is facing this encounter over the next few days. I will update this post with any changes, thoughts or suggestions that I have after I have some first hand experience :)

Oh boy! This one is a doosey! You hate PvP? You hated that third boss in Magister’s Terrace? That will be your tough luck, unfortunately! The third boss in the Crusader’s Coliseum appears to be a flat out arena event, in which you must use your team prowess to beat the other team. There really isn’t a lot you can do to prepare for this, other than to think of a general strategy (i.e. Kill/CC healers first), and be ready to deal with any of the combinations that you are confronted with, as you will never receive the same combination two weeks in a row. Each guild will need to find their stride and what works best for them. We will probably run 7 healers (as that is what we took for Jaraxxus), and try to heal through the DPS while we take out the healers. One key thing that will be extremely important is teamwork, and making sure that everyone works on their assigned target.

I did find a couple of videos on the Faction Champions encounter, but they will be of limited help in preparing for tomorrow. However, they are still worth taking a look at to see what happens during the fight. The video in the second link shows the champions encounter towards the end of the video.

I will be focusing on the Horde NPCs, as I am a horde player, however the alliance do have their own set of mirrored NPCs as well. Both sets of NPCs can be found here. (Per my edit at the bottom, the NPCs listed currently are the ones that the alliance will face. The Horde will face the mirrored alliance ones).

The Horde NPCs are as follows:

Death Knight – Gorgrim Shadowcleave

Druid (Moon Chicken) – Birna Stormhoof

Druid (Healer) – Erin misthoof

Hunter Ruh’kah – with lion

Mage – Ginselle Blightslinger

Paladin (healer) – Liandra Suncaller

Paladin (ret) – Malithas Brightblade

Priest (healer) – Caiphus the Stern

Priest (shadow) – Vivienne Blackwhisper

Rogue – Maz’dinah

Shaman (caster) – Thrakgar

Shaman (melee) – Broln Stouthorn

Warlock – Harkzog – with felhunter

Warrior – Narrhok Steelbreaker

These NPCs appear to have all of the abilities that we have as players, and they use them. They appear to be able to be contained by CC, however it would also be prudent to assume that they are equally effected by diminishing returns. Tanks from the PTR have reported that they are “un-tankable”, meaning that they do not have a set agro table, however if their AI is similar to that in Magister’s Terrace, all of the pets are tauntable and tankable. This is not confirmed, however, and everyone should give it a try as you are first matched up!

Also note that the NPCswill use all of the abilities given to them. So yes, that healer that you are working down will likely receive a Hand of Protection as his life gets low. That shadow priest may use dispersion to mitigate some of the damage she’s taking. The shaman will bloodlust (it must be removed immediately! Purge, Mass Dispel, Spell Steal). The mage will sheep, and the warlock will likely banish. You need to think outside of the box and be ready for anything.

So…the title says “Getting Grid Ready” for this mess. Well, how in the heck are you supposed to do that?!?! Easy! Make sure that you have any and all debuffs set up to make sure you can see what is going on. Some people may find it easier to use colors for all of this rather than raid icons, so that they only have to worry about “magic” “disease” “curse” etc. However, it is going to be important that you are aware of how your team mates are afflicted! Here is a non-exclusive list of potential maladies that I was able to think to add, I have highlighted some of what I feel may be the more important ones:

If you can think of anything that I have forgotten, or have any additional thoughts or ideas, please do not hesitate to let me know! Remember to think unconventionally and creatively to deal with this encounter!

Good Luck Everyone and Have Fun!

edit! So…I am a total noob (what else is new?) and the faction champions listed above are indeed the “Horde” champions. What I failed, in grand fashion, to realize is that those are the champions that the alliance will be challenged with, not the horde :) I will update the alliance champions to my list tomorrow!

Tomorrow the Coliseum will be opening up its second boss for its challengers to encounter. This one is the fel warlock Lord Jaraxxus! Similar to last week’s encounter there is very little information out there about the big guy. However, I did unearth the following video of the encounter: Lord Jaraxxus Video. The video itself is in German, however one of the guys over at Tank Spot did a cliff’s notes translation of the commentary so that you can read that to get a general idea of what is being said throughout the video. There is also a fairly nice walkthrough of the video by Spiritus over at tankspot that is worth checking out.

EDIT: I stumbled across another video today from a priest’s perspective, that is also worth watching to give you another feel for the encounter.

From the video, reading the commentary, and studying the abilities of Lord Jaraxxus, there are a few debuffs that are going to be important for healers to add to GRID before entering the Coliseum this Tuesday!

Incinerate Flesh– This is going to be a BIG one for healers to be able to track. The debuff will go on any member of the raid and will “absorb the next 60K healing received and decrease damage dealt by 50% for 15 seconds. If Incinerate Flesh is not removed before it expires it will cause a burning Inferno”.

What this means, as far as I read it, is that the target needs to receive more than 60k in healing (I do not think they will be taking damage during this time, but I’m not certain) over the 15 seconds to avoid spawning the burning inferno.

This means that you are going to need dedicated raid healers to drop bombs on this target every time Lord Jaraxxus casts the ability onto a member of your raid.

Fel Fireball– Inflicts fire damage and an additional fire DoT on the target for 5 seconds.

I am curious if this spell can be interuppted based on it’s cast time. However if not, people will need to stay spread out, and this damage will need dedicated healers to handle the damage.

Note…this can be interuppted.

Leigon Flame– This will hit a target causing a ticking fire damage (I think), and this target will need to move away from the raid to kite their fire away. Regardless of if extra heals are required, raid leaders will need to know who if afflicted with this debuff.

Touch of Jaraxxus and Curse of the Nether – Will inflict ~4,000 shadow damage for 12 seconds and cause nearby players to be effected by Curse of the Nether, which inflicts ~4500 shadow damage for 15 seconds.

I suspect that this can be, and will need to be, decursed from the afflicted target. This will again require people to stay spread out so that this doesn’t bounce to nearby players.

Spinning Pain Spike and Spinning Spike– Leaps to an enemy, grabs them, and causes physical damage equal to a percentage of the target’s maximum health.

Again, another ability that is going to require raid healers to be on their game with fast heals.

* UPDATE: From my experiences last nigt Incinerate Flesh and Fel Fireball showed up perfectly in GRID, which are the most important. However, even though I set the others as debuffs, I did not get them to show in GRID. I don’t know if he never cast the curses, or if I mispelled the debuffs, or the debuffs have unique and different names. I will see if I can’t tweak it a little more and will update the post as I get them worked out. Did anyone else have any luck with getting any of the other debuffs set up in GRID?

After an hour or two of exploring the patch, we threw 10 people together and went into the 10 man version of the Cursader’s Coliseum. After a few pulls, we put everything together and netted a clean kill, with the trickiest part working out what to do with phase 2. I will likely do a write up after we see the 25 man tomorrow night, but honestly everything that you need is in the post Matticus did, and is linked in my post below.

I did, however, want to give you a quick heads up on what you may want to take care of in Grid before your first venture in to see the Northrend Beasts!

There is a GRID update, it’s not on curse as of the time of this post, but the most recent version can be found here. It was updated roughly 5 or 6 days ago. I downloaded this before our 10 man raid tonight, and had no noticble errors while running the instance and GRID worked perfectly, as far as I can tell.

As a side note, if you are a Deadly Boss Mods user, you can download the newest version (also not up on curse as of this post) here. The site is slammed, so if it is down when you attempt to grab the download, just keep randomly checking it.

Another note for those of you that use X-Perl. You will find that you have a ton of errors. You can grab the update (you got it…not on curse yet!) here.

There are a few key debuffs that you will want to add into GRID for the first encounter in the Coliseum. My preference is to have my debuffs shown as the center icon on GRID. (Kae has done an excellent walkthrough on adding debuffs to GRID, if you need assitance with adding debuffs).

Impale – This will be a stacking debuff on your tanks that will do periodic damage on the tank during the Gormok portion of the encounter.

Burning Bile – This is a debuff that will be placed on members of the raid during the Acidmaw and Dreadscale portion of the encounter. Not only will these people need some extra heal love, but non-healers will need to be aware of who has this debuff so that they can cleanse themselves of the paralytic poison!

Paralytic Toxin – This is a debuff that will be placed on members of the raid during the Acidmaw and Dreadscale portion of the encounter. These people will also need a few extra heals, but it will be important to know who has this debuff so that they can pair up with a party member afflicted with Burning Bile to remove it.

As a side note, it may be beneficial to set up Arctic Breath as well, as those afflicted will need extra heals, however I did not try this tonight, so I do not know if it is worthwhile.

Hopefully that helps everyone just a little bit! Good Luck and Happy Healing!

edit: This warning was just posted by Ice Dragon. Do NOT visit curse at this time (none of my links above are to curse). Apparently one of their banner ads has a keylogger in it. Wait for an all clear before returning to curse.

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